Chapter 10

In the month of May, 1839, all things being ready, the Russian expedition commenced its march into the mountains. General Grabbe, an active and resolute officer in command of the left flank of the army of the Caucasus, had collected from the fortresses along the line where it crosses the Sulak, a force of nine battalions and seventeen pieces of artillery. They were his very best troops, including a part of the celebrated regiment "Count Paskievitsch," and with them he pressed forward with such rapidity towards Buturnay, and then attacked it with such impetuosity, that Schamyl was obliged at once to relinquish all hope of making a stand there. His allies, the Tcherkejians, taken by surprise at the suddenness of the enemy's advance, had not time to come to his assistance; the Salatanians were overawed by the extraordinary display of force made on their borders; and the Tchetchenians, alarmed by the bold face with which the Russian commander opened the campaign, and by his success at several minor points of conflict, took counsel of prudence, and failed to make the promised diversion on the line.

Schamyl, therefore, after a two hours' resistance fell back on Arguani. Here relying on a stronger position, and finding himself at the head of about ten thousand men, he awaited the coming up of the enemy. The contest which then took place lasted two days. Schamyl lost nearly fifteen hundred men in killed and wounded, and was beaten. It was the most bloody fight which had then occurred in the history of the war, and would have put an end at once to the campaign had not the Lesghians, every man of them, been determined to stand by their Imam and their liberty to the last. Instead, therefore, of scattering after a defeat so decisive, as might have been expected of mountaineers so little accustomed to regular warfare, they heroically threw themselves into Akhulgo.

The invaders having at length taken possession of both banks of the Koissu, and easily repulsed an attack of six thousand mountaineers led on by Achwerdu Mohamet, who had recently deserted from the Russian service, set themselves down on the twelfth of June before Akhulgo, closely investing it. General Grabbe hoped at first to induce the enemy to surrender by showering them with bombs, balls, and rockets; but while he succeeded in destroying many of the fortifications and stone houses, the subterranean defences remained undamaged. From these and the works on the terraces the besieged answered with their rifles, sparing indeed of their ammunition, but taking an unerring, deadly aim. Nowhere could the Russians show a head above their defences without imminent risk of losing it. Nor was their entire force scarcely adequate to man the posts; so that frequently the same troops who had worked all day in the trenches were obliged to stand guard during a portion of the night. Still they worked with hearty good-will, gradually carrying forward their batteries, cutting their way through the soft, porous rock, and sheltering themselves from the rifle-balls of the enemy by means of gabions and stone walls. During the early part of the siege the Russian camp was abundantly supplied with provisions; the Koissu gave them abundance of good water; the neighboring forests furnished wood for cooking the evening's soup; their fragrant boughs made easy beds at night; while numerous watch fires warmed the feet of the sleeping soldiers as they lay stretched beneath the stars. Even a certain degree of hilarity prevailed in the camp, so different from the prison of the krepost, where the daily drill, the appointed roll of the drum, and the enforced dance and song but poorly relieved the still, dull monotony. But the mirth was often ill-timed; for when refreshed by the evening's pottage and his cup of _wodka_, the Cossack sat carolling a ditty or meditating on the charms of the fair one left behind on the Don, suddenly a ball from the rifle of some watchful mountaineer would send him tumbling headlong into the Koissu. Or when the grey-coated grenadiers in the intervals between the roar of the artillery and the tumult of the trumpets, feeling their hearts stirred by a sudden enthusiasm, would break out into chanting, the half devotional, half martial air would often prove a dirge for some poor comrade struck down with the chorus on his lips by the ball of an invisible enemy.

The enthusiasm on the other side was less gay, but more intense. Besides the crack of the rifle, the only sounds from the fortress which fell down on the air when it was still, were the muezzin's call to prayer, or the shout of triumph when some frenzy-driven murid, sallying from his hiding-place, leaped suddenly into the midst of an exposed party of the enemy, and at the price of his own life sent twice, thrice, four times as many unbelieving souls to hell. For in the progress of the siege many a warrior who was doomed by his oath to death, and was become impatient of the hour, grasping a shaska in his right hand, a pistol in his left, and holding a poniard clenched between his teeth, sprang down from the rocks upon some too adventurous squad of the enemy--as terrible an apparition as a ghost, or a bomb-shell--discharging his pistol at the breast of one, cleaving with his shaska the head of another, and then rushing shaska in one hand and poniard in the other, upon the rest, until he fell pierced through with bayonets, but having first sweetened the bitterness of death with a terrible vengeance. Of such heroic self-sacrifice is the Circassian capable!

Twice was the moon renewed in the slow progress of this siege. At length, having previously got possession of one of the detached towers of the fortress, and having been reinforced by five battalions and nine pieces of artillery, the Russians, despairing of reducing the place by blockade, attacked it by storm. But they did not get above the first terrace; and from that they were beaten back with severe loss,--of the three battalions of the splendid regiment "Count Paskievitsch," which led the assault, only one returning. Nevertheless, General Grabbe was not to be disheartened. Another and still another assault was made; and after a loss of nearly two thousand men the second terrace was finally carried. Then Schamyl seeing that his fortunes were becoming desperate sent a request to the Russian commander to treat respecting terms of peace. What his intentions were in so doing is not known; though it was the opinion of General Grabbe that he was not sincere; and when the latter demanded Schamyl's son as a hostage previously to the opening of negotiations, the matter was dropped. Probably the Imam was desirous of making an arrangement similar to that which under somewhat similar circumstances had been agreed upon with General Fesi; but he had now a different man to deal with.

The contest therefore was recommenced on the seventeenth of August with new fury. Then for four successive days Akhulgo was a scene of heroism equalled only by its horror. The Russian soldiers evinced that ferocious bravery of which the serf nature is capable when its blood is up, while the Circassians, driven to despair, sought to avenge beforehand the lives they so gallantly laid down. High on the battlements, as at intervals the smoke of the two hostile fires cleared away, could be seen female forms, shaska or rifle in the little hand, encouraging the warriors by their side, pressing on with them wherever the danger was most imminent, and displaying a heroism greater even than that of their own amazons of old, inasmuch as they fought for their lords as well as for liberty.

But fortune finally favored the besiegers. Their sappers having carried a covered way up to the foot of a portion of the fortress which had newly been constructed, and the Circassians becoming anxious to learn the cause of the strange noises constantly heard beneath their feet, a party of the latter imprudently went out to reconnoitre, when the chief of a battalion who lay in wait with his men on the second terrace, seizing upon the advantage offered, not only drove the exploring party back into the fortress, but also went in with them. The Circassians within, however, seeing that the Russians were mixed up with their own comrades refrained from firing. This gave the other battalions time to hasten to the support of the party which they saw had gained the summit, when a hand to hand conflict ensued in which both sides fought, the one with the bravery of despair, the other with that of victory. But superior numbers prevailed; and four times stormed the fortress fell. Of the mountaineers that lay dead on the top of the rock the Russians counted, according to some of their accounts, fifteen hundred, according to others, more likely to be true, seven hundred; of the wounded, from nine hundred to five hundred; while their own loss was set down as considerably less than one half these numbers. Several hundred prisoners also were taken, consisting of women and children; for of men there were none left. With the blood of these the Koissu was already red, and their bodies were thrown in afterwards.

But Schamyl, who had often been seen during the final conflict surrounded by his white turbaned murids, was nowhere to be found. The fortress, all the approaches to which were strictly guarded, was ransacked; every nook and corner explored; but the Imam was nowhere to be found. Alas! for General Grabbe, that but one man should escape from Akhulgo, and he Schamyl. His single head would have made up for the loss of the three thousand Russian heads laid low in the siege; but without it the victory was barren, all its spoils a mere rock in the mountains!

The manner of Schamyl's escape was kept secret by him, as before had been the case at Himri and at Chunsach; but among the reports respecting it which were circulated in the mountains, the following one was most generally credited.

On the fall of the fortress a number of its defenders took refuge in certain caves and holes in the rock, into which they let themselves down by means of ladders. In one of these was Schamyl with a few of his murids. Attacked by the enemy, this one held out longer than the others; but the rock being guarded on all sides, escape was thought impossible. The murids, however, having devised a plan for preserving the life of their chief by the loss of their own, constructed from materials previously collected in the cave, a raft of sufficient size to carry several persons, and letting it down at night into the river below, then followed themselves. The guard on the bank observing this manouvre, immediately gave chase to the raft, those on horseback plunging into the stream, those on foot running along the bank, and all together pouring their fire into the little party of murids among whom was, as they supposed, Schamyl. But the attention of the enemy once turned away from the cave, the wily chieftain let himself down into the water, swam the river, and in another moment was safe under the protection of the rocks and the forest.

Certain it is that early in the month of September, Schamyl reappeared in the aoul Siassan, in the woods of Itchkeria. There, partly for the sake of ransoming the families of his nearest relatives and most devoted murids taken captive in Akhulgo, he sued for peace, and offered to give in pledge of sincerity two of his own sons as hostages. But General Grabbe insisting as a preliminary condition that Schamyl should take up his residence in an aoul friendly to the Russians, the negotiations were not proceeded with.

Thereupon, General Grabbe having razed Akhulgo, having laid a contribution in sheep and cattle on some districts, taken hostages from others, and received the bread and salt of submission from all the aouls through which he passed, returned in triumph to Temir-Chan-Schura. Great thereupon was the rejoicing in all the fortresses of the Russian line--in all the Cis and Trans-Caucasian provinces--and in St. Petersburg itself where the emperor ordered a medal to be struck commemorative of this brilliant feat at arms, and copies of it to be distributed among the brave soldiers who had taken part in it.

XXXV.

THE EXPEDITION AGAINST DARGO.

The defeat at Akhulgo did not turn away from Schamyl the hearts of his countrymen. On the contrary, now thrice delivered by Allah out of the hands of the infidels, he was regarded by them with the greater veneration. Though escaped with only his life and his arms, when he appeared in the aouls of Itchkeria, a territory lying north of the Andian branch of the Koissu, the mountaineers received him as a prophet come directly from God, and mounting their horses followed him. The news of his coming ran before him through all the highlands; the warriors half drew their shaskas at hearing it; the chieftains of the Tchetchenians who had received the cross of St. George from the Russians, tore it from their breasts; and the bards striking with a frenzy of inspiration their lyres, chanted the miraculous deliverance and great deeds of this successor of Mahomet.

Thus going from aoul to aoul preaching faith in Allah and war against his enemies, sending out also disciples to visit in his name the remoter districts, threatening death to all who held with the Russians, here driving away flocks and herds, and there taking hostages, he in a few months succeeded in rallying around his standards great numbers of the Tchetchenians, of the Lesghians, and of the various tribes of Daghestan. Disgusted by the treatment he received at the hands of the Russians, as was also the case with most of the highland tribes who had recently been obliged to submit their necks to the yoke of bondage, even his old enemy Hadji-Murad came over to the side of the Imam, bringing the greater part of Avaria with him. The spirit of fanatic war swept over the whole eastern Caucasus like a tempest; and those tribes, like the Salatanians, who from the nearness of their position to the Russian line were obliged nominally to acknowledge the supremacy of the czar, burned in their hearts to join again the standard of revolt.

His head-quarters Schamyl now established in Dargo, an aoul consisting of about seventy houses, and situated some fifty miles northwest from Akhulgo, in that part of Tchetchenia inhabited by the Itchkerians. Though an open aoul, Dargo was sufficiently protected by the mountains and the thick forests which everywhere covered them; for here the primeval woods had never been disturbed by the axe of any pioneers of civilization. The oaks stretched out against the sky their twisted branches crowned with the glory of two centuries; the beeches with their innumerable leaves spread out a wider shade than those which in Italy inspired the pastoral reed of Virgil; the round-topped elms towered high above the gracefully pointed birches, and the trembling poplars; while below in many localities a vast variety of flower-bearing plants, vines, and creepers formed a tangled web as beautiful to the eye and fragrant to the sense as to the feet impenetrable.

But instructed by the disasters of the campaign of Akhulgo, Schamyl resolved no more to concentrate his forces and attempt to meet the enemy face to face. Accordingly, apportioning them among his chief murids, such as Achwerdu-Mahomet, Schwaib-Mollah, Ulubuy-Mollah, Taschaw-Hadji, Dschewad-Khan, and Hadji-Murad, besides retaining a considerable force under his own command, he was enabled to overawe a very great number of tribes, and to threaten the Russians simultaneously at various points. Inroads were made at one time into the land of the Kumucks, that of Schamchal, and Avaria; at another, the Russian line was threatened; and again, the forts were attacked on the road to Kisliar. If hard pushed the murids retreated; wherever opportunity offered they struck a blow and suddenly retired; those tribes who wavered in their allegiance found themselves unexpectedly visited with retribution; and when the Tchetchenians, aggrieved by Schamyl's apparent neglect of their interests, took advantage of a wound received by him to send messengers to Tiflis to sue for peace, immediately he appeared in their midst, terrifying rather than winning them back to the cause of the patriots.

Such remained the state of affairs until the year 1842, when General Grabbe, less benefited by experience than his antagonist, resolved to make an expedition against Dargo, similar to that of Akhulgo. Differing in his views of the proper mode of conducting the war from his superior, Governor-general Golowin, who resided in Tiflis, away from the scene of actual hostilities, and who was in favor of the less aggressive system of a blockade, he had then just returned from St. Petersburg, whither he had gone to explain his plans of action to the imperial cabinet, and whence partly in consequence of his representations the emperor had sent his minister of war, Prince Tschernitscheff to inspect the military posts in both Cis and Trans-Caucasia. To surprise then the Prince, upon his arrival on the left flank of the line of operations, by a splendid feat of arms which should serve to demonstrate the correctness of his own theory of procedure, General Grabbe undertook the expedition against Dargo.

On the twenty ninth of May, accordingly, he set out at the head of thirteen battalions, or about eight thousand six hundred foot-soldiers. Of cavalry, on account of the difficult nature of the march, he took none, excepting a few Cossacks to attend upon his own person. Every soldier was loaded down with sixty cartridges, and provisions for eight days in his knapsack. The guns, four and six pounders, were drawn each by four horses; and there were besides a few baggage-wagons, which were dragged with still more difficulty over ground where wheels never rolled before.

At the close of the first day's march, the soldiers as they lay around their camp-fires congratulated themselves that they had not heard on the way the report of a single rifle; though some of the sharpshooters of the vanguard pretended that they had seen here and there the slender form of a Circassian flitting like an apparition or a wood-demon behind the large-stemmed trees. But after the soldiers, having cooked and eaten their pottage and swallowed the refreshing draught of _wodka_, had stretched their limbs wearied with the hard day's march upon the sweet-smelling herbs and branches, suddenly a rattling volley of musketry brought every man to his feet. The Circassians were upon them. But in the dark they could not discern the enemy scattered about among the trees, and could fire only wherever they saw a flash. The contest, however, did not prove to be a serious one, from lack of certain aim, comparatively few falling on either side; but the firing continued at intervals through the night effectually scared away sleep, and thereby rendered the soldiers less fit for the duties of the day following.

When the morning dawning lit up the darkness of the woods, not a Circassian was to be seen. The enemy had in fact begun to put his new tactics into execution, worrying the march he had no wish to arrest, and giving the column of invaders only a foretaste of the retribution which awaited them for daring to profane by their presence the woods free from the foundations of the world. During the freshness of the early morning the column advanced unhindered save by the unevenness of the ground, the thick-standing trees, and the undergrowth which in many places almost barred the way which it beautified. But towards noon, as the route led through a ravine in the forest, the firing recommenced. A considerable body of Circassians posted behind the trees poured a murderous volley in upon the vanguard. The number of the wounded increased to such a degree that the horses and wagons were not sufficient for their transportation. Thereupon several of the higher officers, their minds weighed down with sad presentiments, advised the commanding general to relinquish an expedition which at every step seemed to be involved in greater difficulties and more serious dangers. But the heart of General Grabbe was set upon entertaining the imperial minister of war with the celebration of a great victory; and he kept on.

On the second evening of the march the tents were pitched in a small, open meadow in the hills, skirted by the forest; yet the weary soldiers were not lulled to sleep by the soft murmuring of the night wind in the tree tops, nor by the silvery tinkling of the brook which flowed through the green; but all night long the sharp crack of rifles and the whizzing of bullets drove away repose, and filled the before silent woods with the tumult and the pains of a pandemonium. Nor did the rising sun scatter the enemy with the darkness, but at every step of the morning's march the pitiless missiles of destruction were hurled from invisible foes upon the now nearly decimated column.

Twelve wersts more, and it would be at the end of its march. The little aoul of Dargo, perched on a hill-top, was even descried in the transparent distance. But the eyes which were turned towards it beheld death staring them in the face still nearer; and at length General Grabbe, seeing that to reach his destination however near would imperil the entire column,--and that for a purpose which by this time he must have perceived to be utterly futile,--gave the order to retreat.

Then as the Circassians, estimated to have been nearly six thousand strong, saw that the advanced guard had wheeled about, and that the column was retracing its footsteps, their enthusiasm mounted to frenzy; and slinging their rifles behind their backs they rushed upon the enemy's centre shaska in hand. Several times they broke through it. But the well-disciplined soldiers restoring as often the disordered ranks fought bravely; for they fought for their lives, the Circassians giving no quarter. Still, as the day wore away many a comrade wearied out by both marching and fighting, exhausted from loss of blood, and tormented by thirst still more than by his wounds, dropped behind the column, and throwing away his knapsack in despair, resigned himself to death at the hands of the first warrior who should come up with him.

At night no soul was allowed any other sleep than that of death. Though the enemy was reluctant to waste his powder in the darkness, yet he kept close by the side of his victims; while the wolves of the forest followed howling behind. As the captain at sea when the tempest roars around his vessel ready to ingulf it stands watching through the dismal hours of the night by the wheel, so did the officers of this forlorn column stand around the bivouac fires vociferating orders which in the confusion and the darkness could but imperfectly be executed. And when at last day broke over the mountain tops, the first beautiful day of June, the soldiers looked at its blush in the east with faces pallid with watching and haggard with despair.

Three hundred times, as was estimated, did the soldier discharge his musket, until from want of cleaning it could be used no longer. The officers, who to prevent their coats from being a mark for the rifles had put on those of common soldiers, still recognized by their sharp-eyed foe by means of the superior cast of lineaments and the manlier carriage, were picked off--thirty-six out of sixty. A drummer taken captive was compelled to beat his drum as a signal indicating the direction of the march, but which led those who followed its call into the midst of their enemies. Six cannon at one time fell into the hands of the Circassians, who in attacking the artillery especially displayed a strength of muscle in wielding the shaska, and an agility of limb in parrying or avoiding the bayonet-thrust, which excited the wonder as well as the dread of the enemy.